Everyone has forgotten a personal item at least once. Once lost, the items may or may not ever be returned to the rightful owner. For example, when on vacation, a user may forget an item(s) in a hotel room. In another example, a customer may forget an item in a rental car, sporting event, or any other establishment or event. The most common item left in hotel rooms is chargers, such as a cell phone charger. However, any other valuable items may also be lost or left behind such as clothing, cell phones, jewelry, and the like. Typically hotel personnel simply toss the lost charger in a lost-and-found box at the front desk, wait for a phone call from the customer, then rummage through the lost-and-found box to see if the description provided by the customer matches any charger they have in the lost-and-found box.
For large entities having many establishment or locations throughout the world or brokers acting as intermediaries for those establishments, reporting and returning lost and found items is even more difficult. Currently, the typical method of reporting lost and found items at large entities involves receiving a report via telephone form a customer. The report is then transcribed and forwarded to one of their many establishments or converted to email and forwarded individually. The current process is labor intensive, inefficient and prone to many errors, including being lost or never used to reunite the lost item with its owner.